CHAPTER 1: Allons-y!
He'd given up, she could see the distance in his eyes. The physical void that had been separating them for years had now become an emotional empty space between them. She knows now that his mind is made up, he will not take her, though she knows he has missed her, as she has him, she knows that for him there is little difference between another five minutes and another five decades. To a Timelord both are no more than a blink of an eye compared to the hundreds of years which he will inevitably live on long after she has withered and died. By leaving her he is freeing himself of that fate and numbing his own pain with the knowledge that this will make her happy – and when it came down to it, if the roles were reversed, would she not do the same?
Almost sounding as if they are under the waves that are throwing themselves onto the mercy of the shore, the Doctors and Donna speak in tongues about how to speed up the growth rate for the TARDIS coral that the Doctor has gifted her and the human Doctor. Rose's mind races on as she desperately tries to process the situation, knowing that if she is to change her mind she has but mere moments. However, their words swirl in the breeze of the beach around her, echoing in her mind and reverberating in her chest, 'you'll grow old at the same time as me', 'Together…together…together'. Images of a life she has never dared to dream of simmer at the back of her mind, along with a potential future of them together with her family. It had been her Mother and little Tony she had dreaded leaving behind the most. But now she has the opportunity to watch him grow up after all. All the potential birthdays, Christmases, weddings with her Doctor who would stay 'her Doctor' suddenly stretch out before her, 'this body can't regenerate'. The words echo with their impact. There are so many could-be's calling her back, coaxing her to stay.
'NO, this isn't how it was supposed to go' she thinks. She steps forward exclaiming, "But it's still not right, the Doctor is still you". "And I'm him" he replies. It's no use, deep down she knows that the temptation of the images in her mind have weakened any resolve she may have had to object to the Doctors' plan. Nevertheless, there is one more thing she must know, one more thing that the Timelord has to prove before she can take herself out of his life for what will be forever, really forever. He is about to turn to leave, it is now or never, "Alright, both of you answer me this. When I last stood on this beach on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me?". The Doctor in blue comes closer. She stands between them, walled in by sad eyes. She looks up at the Timelord expectantly, "Go on, say it!".
"I said Rose Tyler," he says resolutely.
"Yeh and how was that sentence gonna end?"
"Does it need saying", he replies wearing a look that barely conceals all the love and sadness that he will never reveal. In that moment Rose knows that is how it would always have been with him but that she has no right to ask any more from him. She turns to the human Doctor in blue, "and you Doctor? What was the end of that sentence"?
He leans over to whisper in her ear, his singular heart racing in his chest, "I love you".
Rose lets out a breath she didn't realise she had been holding as the intensity of his gaze and his words threaten to overwhelm her, there is no longer a choice to be made. She grabs his blue lapels and pulls him into an urgent kiss. It lasts minutes or maybe seconds, she cannot tell, only breaking away at the sound of a door closing and the TARDIS dematerialising. Her stomach twists as she turns towards what is now just an empty space, not just in the sand but also in her heart. 'He doesn't like endings and he doesn't do goodbyes, I should have known', she thinks wistfully. Before she can vocalise the emotion which has gone beyond overwhelming to almost numbing, she feels a cool hand slide into hers. Rose and the human Doctor turn to each other lost for words. As the Doctor opens his mouth his thoughts are interrupted by the shrill voice of Jackie. "I know you two probably need a minute but I'm bloody freezing and gasping for a cuppa". At that, the Doctor snaps out of his reverie and rolls his eyes, only Rose able from this angle to see his face. "Quite right, no point standing around", he exclaims. Then lowering his voice and waggling his eyebrows at Rose he adds, "especially when we have a whole new universe to explore". Rose although through tears can't help but grin back. The realisation that they have a full life together finally beginning to sink in and spread through her body creating a warm uplifting sensation despite the furious wind and Norwegian chill. "Allons-y," says the Doctor as he pulls Rose by the hand following behind Jackie who is already marching with purpose across the sand ahead.
As they walk up off the beach Jackie babbles on the phone to Pete making the arrangements to get them all back to London. Just behind, the Doctor and Rose stroll hand-in-hand. To break the silence and distract herself from her exhaustion and frankly confusing emotional state Rose starts quizzing this familiar but not familiar human-Doctor on the finer points of the metacrisis. She knows that whichever version of himself he is, he is always in his element when giving explanations, particularly of the scientific kind. "So explain it to me some more, how can there be two of you? Like actually two of you?", she says trying to sound light-hearted. The Doctor pauses, he should have expected this, after all however incredible Rose was, to a human mind he does just appear to be a clone, even if he does have all his memories. Also given that he has just offered to spend his one and only life with her, she should fully understand who he is. His Timelord self had given a somewhat brief and ominous description of him as a dangerous genocidal duplicate.
"So", he replies. "You saw how I, well the other me, poured the regeneration energy into my handy spare hand". He waves said hand in the air. Rose nods and squints at him quizzically. He continues, "Well that wasn't all I put into it, regeneration is a pretty uncontrolled process hence all the explosivity...explodiness that's not right no…explosiveness that's the one! Languages always take a while to synch after a regeneration. Anyway, what I was getting at is, I also threw a bit of my consciousness, my soul if you like, into it. But a Timelord consciousness needs a brain, it can't exactly exist in a hand I mean can you imagine!? Aside from the fact that there just isn't enough expressions in intergalactic one handed sign language for the terms in dimensional science, it's just a waste".
"Doctor!", Rose interjects trying to pull him back to the point while failing to conceal a smile. He is so similar, so 'Doctorey'…well, he is the Doctor, but also so different, his newly acquired humanity making him different in a way that she can't quite put her finger on. "So it's like someone cloned your brain and put a part of your soul with all your memories into a human body…or like you regenerated into a human with a Timelord brain using Donna's DNA as a base-print". The Doctor stops in his tracks, reminded again of how quick and amazing this pink and yellow human is. Grinning wildly he scoops her up in a hug and twirls her around, "HA, ah you are brilliant Rose Tyler". As he puts her down Rose retorts "Well it's not that complex is it", she winks and smiles at him with her tongue caught between her teeth before then grabbing his hand and dragging him towards her Mother who is calling for them to "get a shift on" and threatening to leave without them. "Allons-y," says Rose as they run hand in hand towards the taxi waiting to take them to their new life.